


A House Divided

by thermodynamic (euphoriaspill)



Series: Chaos Theory [2]
Category: The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Child Neglect, Corporal Punishment, Drug Dealing, Dysfunctional Family, Gangs, Gen, Heroin, Marijuana, Mental Health Issues, Methamphetamine, Native American Character(s), POV Character of Color, POV First Person, Period-Typical Racism, Poverty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-12 15:46:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12962757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphoriaspill/pseuds/thermodynamic
Summary: The Curtises struggle to cope when an ugly part of Darrel's past resurfaces.





	1. Jasmine

**Author's Note:**

> So I had some writer's block on The Butterfly Effect, and next thing you know, I'm 5k into a prequel where I make Mr. C a drug dealer. It happens.
> 
> Big Warning for this one: there's a lot of period-appropriate racism here towards Native Americans, even from some otherwise sympathetic characters who should definitely know better, and even from the Native American character in question... that isn't shared by the author. Unfortunately, this isn't Leave It to Beaver, and I didn't feel that I could write about a mixed-race couple in the 1950's/60's without mentioning alcoholism, terrible living conditions on reservations, police brutality, residential schools, etc.
> 
> Also... this is just about the Curtis family's lowest point. It's onwards and upwards from here, I promise.

_September 9th, 1958_

 

"Stay still, Jasmine." Mama ominously cocked the brush above my head. "You look a right mess, with all those twigs caught up in your hair."

"But it _hurts_ ," I whined, squirming under her firm grip on my shoulder. She always had to pin me down real good. " _Mama_. You don't gotta _tug_."

"If I don't tug, I reckon birds are gonna be nestin' in there soon."

"I wish you'd quit fussin' at that girl's hair," Daddy said from the armchair, before I could tell Mama that I'd rather have a big ol' bunch of blue jays than put up with this. He had a shiny brown bottle in his hand, something that he'd been holding a lot lately. "You got no idea how to take care of it, anyway."

"You know, I only carried four children, but half the time it feels as though I've got five." Mama's voice was sharp, like she was cutting through glass. It sounded that way whenever Daddy came home later and later and later, walking funny and talking slow. "You have somethin' to say, spit it out already. I ain't in the mood for your head games."

"This place ain't no charity— there's enough of our own kids to feed as is." He took another long swig out of the bottle; Mama's eyes narrowed into needle-thin slits, watching him. "That goddamn brother of yours— how long is it gonna be this time? A month? Two? Six?"

"As long as it takes for Gene to get his house in order." She went back to my tangled curls. "He's my brother. I'm not gonna let him starve on the street."

"Every time I turn around to spit, he's got his hand out, beggin' us for cash." He stood up and started pacing back and forth, his giant feet leaving indents in the carpet. "The man's thirty-five years old, Frannie. When is he gonna find a job already? And I don't mean stitchin' moccasins, or whatever the hell he does all day."

"You know damn well why he can't hold down a job." Mama's strokes got even longer and more vicious, but the twisty feeling in my stomach made me keep quiet. "He's _sick_."

"Then he needs to be in the bin with the other headcases."

"The only reason you don't like him is 'cause you think he's invading your territory," Mama snapped back. "Out of all the things goin' wrong on that reservation, I think my brother stitchin' moccasins and paintin' and smokin' peyote is about rock bottom on anyone's list of concerns."

"What'd Uncle Gene do?" I asked, scrunching my brow up in confusion. "Is he not supposed to live with Nana Liluye?"

Daddy strode over to me and picked me right up with his big arms, leading me back to the armchair. "Sweetheart, you wanna know why I _really_ don't like Uncle Gene?" he asked, scooping me into his lap and smoothing my hair down— I was kind of old for it, but I didn't protest. He didn't do that so much anymore.

"Yeah."

"When my mama was a little girl, not much older than you, she got sent to a boarding school to try to make her act white," he said. "They gave her a new English name there, and dressed her in English clothes, and when she talked Mescalero, they drove needles through her tongue." He stuck his tongue out and jabbed at it, for emphasis. "'Cause they wanted to kill the Indian and save the man. And then when I was in school, we had white teachers who beat us hard enough to break our bones if we looked at 'em cross-eyed."

"Darrel, for God's sake—" Mama started, but Daddy held up a hand to stop her. I tried to imagine needles in my mouth, but then I didn't like imagining it so much anymore.

"So it makes me madder'n heck that Uncle Gene decided to pack up and move to the rez to _go find himself_ , when he couldn't even come to his own sister's wedding. He ain't got no idea what kind of pain he's strolled into, and he don't care. He just thinks we're props for his art, or whatever he's doin' over there. Probably gettin' high all day."

"Your daddy's just madder'n heck 'cause he told Uncle Gene we'd have a bigger house by now, and no dice," Mama said nastily, pulling me out of his reach. "Don't let him pretend this is all about civil rights."

"Is that so, princess."

My stomach did another twist when he said that. He called Mama 'princess' sometimes when he brought home flowers, though I didn't know why— maybe because she had long, pretty blonde hair like one. But now his voice was cold and hard, not teasing at all. "Ain't nothin' ever gonna be good enough for you, is it? You married a fixer-upper, just like this here house, and he ain't goin' along with your fixes."

"Put that bottle down with our daughter in the room," Mama snapped, and I could feel her hands shaking. "I won't have her exposed to any more of your goddamn drinkin'. It's a dirty sin."

"Honey, if you call this drinkin', you shoulda married Andy Thomas from down the street like Gene an' your whole family said, not an Injun." He took another long, deliberate sip, smirking as he swallowed. "My buddy Ice Tray, goin' through two bottles of whiskey a night, now that's drinkin'—"

"Your buddy Ice Tray? The one who sells crank?"

Now Daddy looked like Soda the time Mama caught him jumping off the garage roof with a sheet for a cape, pretending to be Superman. An inch away from losing his grip and falling.

"Jasmine, go to bed," Mama said, her eyes fixed on Daddy. "Right now."

"But Mama—" I didn't know what crank was, or what Daddy had done, but I sure knew I couldn't sleep now.

"You've got until the count of three, missy," she said, hands on her hips. Then her face softened. "I'll be up in a minute to say goodnight. Daddy and I need to have a conversation that ain't for little pitchers."

I hated being called a little pitcher with big ears. I turned to Daddy for sympathy, sympathy he usually gave when Mama made me go to bed, but he was staring straight out the living room window, not at me.

* * *

 

"Whatcha snoopin' for?" Darry asked as he tried to get past me into the kitchen, but I stuck my finger up to my lips and shushed him. "Mom an' Dad talking 'bout your Christmas presents? I'll just tell you already— you're gettin' a switch _and_ a lump of coal under the tree this year."

"Mama an' Daddy are fightin', so hush up," I whispered, my ear against the door. "I wanna know what about. They won't lemme hear nothin'."

The smirk vanished, and Darry elbowed me out of the way, hard— I put up a decent struggle, but I was no match for him, and he got the keyhole, while I was stuck with the thick ol' door. All I could hear were snatches, grabbed out of thin air.

"— thought kickin' you out the first time was enough, but you'll never change, you bum—"

"— didn't hear you complainin' when the drug cash bought you a new refrigerator, did I?"

"— you wanna wake up to the kids' throats slit? You think it's just gonna be the couch cushions slashed open next time?"

"— go ask your rich-ass daddy for the rent money, then, 'cause I dunno how any man's s'pposed to keep up with what this family needs, much less everything you want—"

"What's goin' on?" Soda said, coming out of the room he shared with Darry. His hair was sticking up in a messy cowlick, like Daddy's. "What are y'all standin' here for?"

"Another fight, stupid," Darry whispered, inching closer to me so that Soda could have a place. "Shut up already. I can't hear nothin' with you two breathin' so loud."

"I'll be damned if my sons grow up just like you," Mama suddenly yelled, clear as day. Well, that solved that problem. "No good hoods. And I'll be damned if my daughter grows up to _marry_ a man just like you. I told you as much ten years ago."

"Don't tell me," Daddy said with a loud, harsh laugh. "No, don't tell me. You found someone else, didn't you? Is he handsome? Is he tall? He fuck you better than I do, Fran?"

The slap echoed louder than a gunshot, and I recoiled from the door like I was the one who'd been hit. "Get out."

"You fucking bitch," he said, pure venom in his voice, but I didn't hear him hit her back. "If you want me gone so bad, you don't have to say it twice."

He didn't stop to take anything, not even a duffel bag. One moment, he was in the living room, and the next, the front door had slammed shut behind him and I heard his truck revving up.

Darry, Soda, and I couldn't speak. Not a single word. We couldn't move, either, just stayed suspended in place until Mama swung the door open.

She wasn't crying. Her face was hard and set as she looked down at us, like fossils I'd seen pictures of in science class. "I catch y'all eavesdroppin' on grown folk talk again, there's gonna be trouble. You hear me?"

"I hate you," Soda burst out, fearless despite her anger. He was glaring at her like she'd just cancelled Christmas and his birthday all in one go, his arms folded across his chest. "Why'd you make Dad leave? I don't want him to go nowhere!"

She stepped forward, an inch away from snapping all over him, and then her entire body slackened. "I will do anything to keep you kids safe," she said, putting her hands on his shoulders. "Even if it's from your own father. You'll thank me later." Her grip tightened. "Now listen to your mother and behave yourself."

"Where'd Daddy leave to?" I asked, though I was afraid to hear the answer. Gracie Mathews— her daddy drove off in his pickup truck one day for smokes and never came home, just like that. Never even sent a postcard. "What happened? Mama!"

"He has to... go on a little trip, baby," she said, with a painfully false smile. "That's all."

"No, he ain't," I insisted, frustrated tears pooling along my bottom lash line. "You're lyin'! Is he comin' back?"

"Go to bed— all of you," she said, cradling her head in her hands, even though I couldn't imagine brushing my teeth and pulling on my nightie at a time like this. "Just— Darry, put 'em to bed. I can't deal with this. Mama needs a glass of whiskey, stat."

She walked off without another word, and I soon heard the clink of a cabinet opening. I wanted to run after her, but Darry had me around the waist and was leading me and Soda away before I could. He still hadn't said anything. Just looked at Mom's back like he'd been punched in the stomach, hard.

* * *

 

"Darry? You asleep?"

"Obviously not," he said like a smartass, blearily sitting up in bed. "But you should be."

"I know you know why Daddy left," I said, trying real hard to keep my voice from wobbling as I turned his desk lamp on. Soda was hiding in the bathroom cabinet and didn't want to come out, leaving his bed empty. "So just tell me already."

He flopped backwards onto his mattress again, staring straight up at the ceiling. "You're too little to understand. You an' Soda an' Pony. That's why Mom didn't tell you nothin'."

"Nuh-uh." I hated when people said that, and Darry said that all the darn time— he thought he was so smart, just because he was in eighth grade now. "Try me."

"Dad's sellin' crank and dope and stuff— pills people take to make 'em happy," he said flatly. "He told Mom he'd stopped a long time ago, when I was younger than Pony, but he's back on it again."

"Why?"

"'Cause it makes a lot of money." He threw his Little League baseball up at the ceiling, but didn't bother to catch it. "A lot more than roofin' houses when you're Injun, that's for sure."

"So why's it so bad?" I asked, trying to put the pieces together, but it felt like solving this tricky circle puzzle Pony had gotten for his last birthday, with no corners. "If they make people happy and make Daddy a lot of money."

He was silent for a long time, so long that I started shifting from foot to foot. "This kid in Stevie's grade, Timmy Shepard— his dad got shot last month sellin' them. They had to close the casket at his funeral 'cause his body was so messed up."

My eyes filled with tears again, but I blinked them back and bit my lip. I was a big girl, and you just didn't cry in front of Darry. "I don't want Daddy to die!"

"Yeah. Me neither." He gave up on playing catch with himself and pulled the covers back over his head. "You'd better not tell Pony an' Soda 'bout this. Or Mama. She'll _kill_ me. She don't want y'all worryin'." He peeked out from under the blanket again. "Go to bed already, Christ. She's gonna come check on you any minute now."

When I stumbled back into my room, Pony was just waking up— he had a real early bedtime still, 7:30, and he'd managed to sleep through the whole thing. "What's goin' on?" Pony asked, rubbing his eyes. "You're s'pposed to be in bed. It's _nine_."

"Daddy's on a trip," I said, and sucked in a deep breath as I climbed under my Cinderella bedspread. "Dunno for how long."

His face lit up with a smile, showing his missing front teeth. "To Muskogee? Is he gonna bring us back presents?"

 _No, dummy, it ain't really a trip_ , I wanted to tell him. But Darry had trusted me with a secret for the first time ever, and he'd told me not to say a word about it. Not one single lousy _syllable_. "Sure. I bet. He always brings us back presents, right?"

After that, he went right back to sleep, but I couldn't. I was way too old to believe in silly stuff like monsters under the bed, but sometimes I still did, and Daddy came and peeked for me and said there were only little ones, just about big enough to nibble my toes. Now I guess it was open season on all of Jasmine Curtis, without him to scare them off.

Maybe Daddy was the king of the monsters, and that was why he scared the other ones away. Maybe that was why Mama made him leave.

 


	2. Darry

"Darry, you're gonna have to tell your coach Monday that you can't keep doin' football no more."

At that point in my life, that was like my mama informing me I needed to give up oxygen, effective immediately. "Mom, what? Why?" I sputtered, taking a step backwards. "I  _have_  to play." If I wanted any hope of getting onto the high school team, I needed to be on my A-game this entire season. And I wanted to be on that team even more than I wanted Dad to come back, probably.

"Because Mrs. Mathews found me a job where she works," she said, bustling around in the kitchen, spreading peanut butter on slices of Wonder Bread. "I'll be waitin' tables at her restaurant from now on, so I won't be here after school for a few hours. Someone's gotta watch the kids until I get back."

"Why can't Uncle Gene watch 'em?"

"'Cause Uncle Gene's sick in the head, and that ain't news to you." She slapped the sandwiches together with more force than I thought really necessary. "The man can't look after a goldfish, much less three children. And I haven't got a red cent to give anyone else to watch them for me, so that leaves you, kiddo."

Nobody ever gave me a clear answer about what was wrong with Uncle Gene; it was yet another family secret, a dirty one no one talked about in raised voices until last night. He'd been in the war, and that had messed him up real bad, then he'd taken a lot of acid after and gotten schizo... something, and he smoked a lot of peyote on the rez and his mind never bounced back from that... but she was right. Yesterday, he told me he was dead certain an alien had knocked him up, for Chrissakes.

"This blows," I said, giving the cupboard a hard kick, and for the first time in a long time I felt like a normal thirteen-year-old. Whining about my mom being unfair, instead of walking through a minefield whenever I spoke to her, wondering if every misstep would mean Dad becoming exposed. "Why do I gotta look after them? They ain't  _my_  kids."

"You know what  _blows_ , Darry?" She slammed the butter knife down on the counter. "You know what really  _blows_? Havin' a drunk fool of a husband who hides drugs in his kids' rooms and lies to you about it, and havin' a son who's so damn selfish he can't see that. So quit that whinin' right this minute, or I'm gonna really give you somethin' to whine about."

I didn't know who I was madder about getting insulted, me or Dad, and I was all set to have it out with her when she burst into tears.

"Shit, I'm sorry, baby," she said through great, gulping sobs, pulling me close to her chest. I'd never seen her cry before, and it made me feel a brutal stab of remorse for not just going yes'm. Not when Jasmine was in the hospital with double pneumonia, or when she'd cracked her skull open slipping on a wet floor, or even when Dad had strolled right out. She wasn't the kind of woman who cried about much of anything. "I'm so sorry."

"I didn't think Dad'd be gone for so long," I admitted into the fabric of her blouse. My eyes were teary and my throat was blocked up solid, but goddammit, I was thirteen, practically grown. No way was I gonna bawl into my momma's shirt like I was Pony's age, though to be perfectly honest, I wanted to. "Are you gonna get a divorce?"

It was real hard to get a divorce, but maybe they'd do it. This wasn't the first time I'd heard them scream at each other this month, tear right at the fabric of their marriage. It wasn't even the fifth.

"Hon, I don't know," she said quietly. "I sure hope not, but it ain't all up to me, Darry. Your daddy can't have his cake and eat it, too."

(When I saw my dad again, I wasn't sure if I wanted to sock him in the face or hug him around the waist and beg him not to leave ever again. Maybe the first one, then the second one.)

"You know who I was on the phone with?" she said, mopping her eyes on her shirtsleeve. "Your Grandma Hall. I ain't talked to her since Pony was born."

"What'd she say?"

"That I sound like a hick now," she said with an loud snort. "Then she told me that if I ditched the halfbreed kids, she'd let me come home to live with her. In Lubbock."

"You're not gonna—"

She flicked my ear. "Of course not, baby, hush your mouth. We'll manage. But for now, you're the man of the house, and I really need you to step up. I can't do this alone."

My complicity burned me from the inside out, like battery acid, as she kept hugging me to her. Her calling me a man and getting a job to support us all meant that Dad wasn't going to shuffle in the next morning, shifty-eyed and apologetic, carrying a bouquet of flowers as tall as Jasmine. It meant that this was fucking serious.

And it was all my fault.

* * *

_"This ain't what it looks like, son."_

_He'd woken me up by crashing his entire body weight against the porch door, and now I couldn't take my eyes off of the baggie, filled with white crystals and sparkling in the dim moonlight. Fucking sparkling, like they were diamonds and not crank. "I ain't that much of a dumbass, Dad, c'mon. That isn't rock candy."_

_He gave me a cuff upside the head, but it was barely more than a tap, and his fingers got caught in my hair. My dad had never hit me for real, like a lot of other dads did. "Then you get why you can't tell your mama about this, Einstein. Ever."_

_"How come you're doin' it, then, if you know it's wrong?"_

_"How come you got them sticky Playboys under your bed and a Stella can, huh?" Now it was my turn to blush. "Boy, if I ever so much as catch one whiff of booze on your thirteen-year-old breath—"_

_"People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."_

_He glared at me, and for a second, I thought a real slap might be coming. Then his face split into a grin; he had an ugly streak of dried blood running down his cheek, maybe his, maybe someone else's, but it made the entire expression look macabre. "You're right," he said, slinging his arm around my shoulder. "You're right, I'm a lousy hypocrite, and I know it. But I don't wanna be like— shit, this guy I work with, Ramirez, he got his little boy Soda's age runnin' around with the product. Makes me mad enough to kill something. I don't want you caught up in all this mess."_

_"Just tell me why you're caught up in it," I said, silently pleading for him to level with me. There was a bitter taste pooling in my mouth, worse than all the sips of beer I'd ever had combined._

_"We got no money. That's why." He lit up a cigarette, the tip glowing obscenely against the velvet-dark sky, and sucked in deep. "I'm too damn old to be in it for the thrill anymore, lookin' for adventure. But I can't feed y'all and pay the rent on this place with the kind of salary my boss knows he can give me, and that's the honest truth."_

_"I did a real bad thing to your mother," he said before I could get a word in. "Real bad. I love you, son, you're the light of my fuckin' life, don't take this the wrong way, but half the time I could kill myself for messin' around with her." His shoulders slumped; I was afraid he might start to cry. "She grew up in a rich as shit preacher's family, and they threw her out like a stray dog when she had to marry me. All she's ever asked for is a nice home and a safe place for you kids to grow up in, and all I can give her is this shithole. Grinds a man down after a while."_

_It took me until the end of that speech to realize that he was as high as a damn kite. It felt like watching a temple fall._

_"Can't I do nothin'?"_

_Yeah. Like my paper route would really help here, plaster the cracks of my family back together._

_"Hide this," he said without hesitation, thrusting the bag into my hands. "Please. No one's gonna think to look in your room for it, least of all your mama."_

_In some African tribes, you have to get your foreskin chopped off with a sharp rock to become a man. For me, all I had to do was curl my fingers around the plastic, sticking to my clammy palms, and now my dad's secret was mine too._

_"You're not fixin' to take none of it, are you?" he asked, pinning me with his x-ray eyes. "'Cause I'm gonna be in some deep, deep shit if there's any missin'."_

_I couldn't imagine anything less appealing than that right then, so I just nodded._

_"You're a good kid," he exhaled along with a mouthful of tar. "Better than I deserve. You want a smoke?"_

_He couldn't even keep his morals straight for ten minutes anymore, his head scrambled by whatever he'd huffed or injected or swallowed, but I wasn't about to turn the opportunity down. "Sure," I said, and pretended to cough on it, like I hadn't been lighting up since I'd started middle school. So we could have some sick little father-son bonding moment; baby's first weed._

_"I love you," he said again. Desperately, like he was trying to convince himself. "Thank you."_

_A couple weeks later, Mom found a pouch of Mary Jane vacuuming behind my dresser, one I hadn't known was there; she yelled at me for a solid hour straight before handing me over to Dad, and I just sat there and took it the whole time, throwing in a 'yes, ma'am' whenever she paused for breath. He told me to make it sound good while he whaled the shit out of a cushion, then took me out for ice cream and kept saying he was sorry, he was so grateful I hadn't blown his cover, he'd quit after one last job, he loved me he loved me he loved me._

_I let the ice cream melt all over my spoon, feeling too sick to swallow._

* * *

Tim looked like he didn't take too many baths, back when he was going on twelve— small and skinny, with big patches of grime on his neck and face that no washcloth ever touched, and a giant rip down the front of his Sooners shirt. If I'd brought him home, Mom would've immediately taken him by the arm and bundled him into the tub, what she'd done when Soda was a kid and made friends with Johnny and Steve.

"Hey, Timmy," I said when I found him at the abandoned lot near my house, eating a (most likely stolen) Babe Ruth and wiping his sticky hands on his jeans. We'd done Little League together, but he'd gotten booted out after the third game because he'd thrown his bat at the umpire. I hadn't seen him much since.

"Call me that again, I'm gonna gut you like a fish." He stabbed a chocolate-covered finger in my direction. "It's  _Tim_. I ain't no baby."

"My dad left," just spilled out of my mouth before I could regret it. For some reason, I felt kind of swaggery when I said that. Real tough. None of the hood boys at school had decent dads— either they'd walked out, or were in Big Mac, or were flat-out dead, like Tim's. I guess I was in on that club now.

It wasn't like I had a ton of friends I could tell about all this. The hood kids had always thought I was a square and tried to jump me when I brought my books home from school, before I figured out to hide them in a pizza box, and the rich ones acted like everyone from the East Side was fixing to shank them if we got too close; even the guys on the football team were so standoffish that I doubted I'd miss them much.

"Huh," Tim said, trying to sound bored and cool, but he couldn't hide the hint of interest in his voice. "Thought you had a real good family an' everything, Curtis."

"He's been dealin' crank and dope and shit like that," I said, sliding the cuss word out casually. "So my mama threw him out on his ass."

"That's fucking dumb," Tim scoffed. "Only reason my mama kept my dad around was 'cause crank bought her one of them new electric ranges."

"Don't call my mama dumb," I said, elbowing him hard in the ribs, and we shoved each other around for a solid minute. "Your mama's the dumb one."

"Yeah, she is," he agreed easily. " _Super_  dumb. She got this new guy at home now, we're s'pposed to call him Uncle Will, but he ain't know shit from Shinola." He shrugged. "My  _real_  uncles said she's just a gringa whore, so I don't gotta listen to her anyway."

I kicked the dust beneath my feet, letting it get all over my holey sneakers. "You miss your dad?"

"He said I was his favorite after Angel, 'cause Curly's prob'ly not his— so I guess." Tim pulled a knife out of his jeans pocket; it gleamed in the sun, as bright as any crank crystal. "You got one of these? Dad gave me his old switch 'fore he went to the slammer again."

I shook my head. "My daddy said me an' my brothers can't have blades 'til we're sixteen."

His smile was the kind that carved straight through you. "So?"

So. So what.

"He's got one in his underwear drawer," I said. "Long as hell. He didn't take it with him."

( _Walk it off_ , my seventh grade coach had told me after I'd torn a ligament, my ankle swollen into an ugly watercolor of blue and purple, the pain reverberating through my entire body.  _It doesn't hurt, son. Walk it off now._ )


End file.
